Small biz group to get day in court
vs. DOD subcontracting program

By Alice LipowiczSet-Aside Alert
April 28, 2017

A
small-business group will go to trial in December against the Defense Dept. to
try to reveal more information about the workings of the DOD’s longstanding
Comprehensive Subcontracting Plan Test Program. The American Small Business
League, headed by Lloyd Chapman, has been criticizing the program for several
years because Chapman contends it has not performed well and has reduced
opportunities for small businesses. Chapman said he has been unable to review
crucial documents from the program because of various Freedom of Information
Act exemptions that have been applied by DOD officials. He hopes that the
testimony and documents to be revealed in court will provide sufficient
evidence to prove that the program is negatively affecting small businesses,
and that problems with the program have been ignored or covered up over the
years. “I'm confident that we will uncover evidence that would force the
Pentagon and Congress to dismantle the Pentagon's Comprehensive Subcontracting
Plan Test Program,” Chapman told Set-AsideAlert in an emailed
statement. Congress set up the DOD subcontracting program in 1989. While the
value of the program has been challenged by Chapman and others, Congress last
year renewed it for another 10 years. The program allows large DOD contractors
to develop small business subcontracting plans on a corporate, division or
plant-wide basis, rather than developing a subcontracting plan for each
contract. The goal was to determine whether the comprehensive test plan would
provide greater opportunity for small businesses. Chapman said the DOD’s use of
FOIA exemptions to withhold information on the program has made it very
difficult to evaluate if the program is meeting small business goals. Chapman
sued Sikorsky Aircraft and the DOD to gain release of Sikorsky’s small business
subcontracting plan. He won the case in court in 2014 but Sikorsky and DOD
successfully appealed, and the case was sent back to the lower court. In the
latest development, a California judge approved an agreement between the league
and DOD to go to trial to examine whether or not a specific FOIA exemption
applies to information that Sikorsky and DOD withheld on Sikorsky’s small
business subcontracting plan. U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California ordered that
the trial would include as many as 10 depositions from DOD on the program. A
spokesman for Sikorsky told GovExec that at this time
Sikorsky is no longer a party to the litigation. A DOD spokesman declined to comment,
citing a policy of avoiding commenting on pending litigation.